I work in a tile making factory. Roof Tiles. In France.
Are all factory labourers crazy? or just the French?

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Financial Crisis & The Tile factory

"La Crise"

What with La Crise & the erosion of our "pouvoir d'achat" the french are more depressed and pessimistic than usual.

Pessimists! I swear, every time I go into the café to ask for advice or opinions all I get is "o la la" and hand waving. Like when I was after advice on installing an arialairealaereal une antenne. But that can be another post another day.

Because of the big recession, nobody is building any new houses. So the demand for roof tiles has dropped. We have a yard full of product and sales are way down. So the factory has to cut production. But it would be mad to have staff hanging around being paid to do nothing, so the first thing they did was drop all the interim staff. That enabled them to cut a team.

We usually run with 5 teams and the presses turning 24/24. Last year on the accessories lines we even had a sixth team running during day shifts. In January it was announced that they need to lose 18 more people. If they can find these 18 through voluntary reduncancy, early retirement etc then there won't be any need to fire anyone.

The worrying thing for me is that I was one of the last people taken on full time contract. So if the operate a "last in, first out" system I'm at risk.

Rumour is that they already have eight or nine who have agreed to leave. In the meantime though I'm going to get the whole family down to the dentist and the optician to get the maximum out of the company's medical aid just in case I am axed.

The last few months I've been really hating this job, but there's nothing like the threat of "chomage" to make you appreciate employment.